


Armies Moving Close

by perryvic, Zaganthi (Caffiends)



Series: Pray Your Gods [2]
Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Genre: BAMF John Watson, Gen, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:23:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perryvic/pseuds/perryvic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffiends/pseuds/Zaganthi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a common practice for those who weary of life to make use of those final moments. Those of a passive disposition offer themselves to the Royals of those tastes that polite society does not speak of, though it is known of course. Others cast their life into the defense of their country in such places as Baskerville and I should have known that the limping doctor would be of that type as well as myself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Armies Moving Close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



> Sorry -- we ran out of time for porn. But you had a great prompt.

I have not put pen to paper nor thought in deep impressions in any form in weeks. For a time, I had allowed grief to overwhelm me, and I thought to what end? Why chronicle these horrors, these moments I no longer wished to reflect on? And it was the most mundane of moments. It was a skull on rock and water, rushing water, and my inability to scramble to the rushes fast enough for it to matter.

At the last, the one thing I was proud of, that I believed I could do better than most that was left to me from my Army days failed me. For all my physical prowess I could not save him, and that tumble into the thundering waters, home of one of Switzerland's most venerable Royals sealed the fate of my most bosom of companions.

None could survive that fall into the darkness of their realm. I took little comfort in the evidence that he had taken the bedamned Rache with him and lauded himself with his final action as a posthumous hero. The journey home, and ruminating over his final note to me, told me that as deeply influenced as he had been by the Royals, he'd known what would befall him, and he had wanted to keep me as far from it as possible. By disobeying him, I had merely informed myself of his fate, rather than forever wondering what had happened.  But it hadn't changed the course of history. I returned to our flat, and struggled to function for some time, eaten by nightmares as if by worms.

I found my thoughts returning to what had happened in the preceding time, studying it as if I could somehow find a point where I could have stopped the insanity. But James had never seemed more alive than in those times where he hunted Rache, or Rache hunted him. Sometimes we succeeded in thwarting their plans, and sometimes we came away bitter in defeat for James would admit with begrudging admiration that Sherlock Holmes was his equal.

It was only later that the implication that others were lesser mortals began to become more prevalent in his monologues, and traitorously, I would recall the words of the Limping Doctor to me from outside the Obelisk where once I had been stolen as a sacrifice. He had warned me of the corruption of the mind that came with contact with the Royals, and Chaat knew, James was summoned by Victoria Gloriana often enough.

But no more. And she did not summon me, because though I had been James' loyal companion, I had at the heart of it been responsible for the failure to maintain the gate through in Albion. Given my culpability, my continued existence, I often supposed I was lucky to be allowed to live on.

So I was left. Left with my memories at Baker Street, tethered there by something indefinable and painful that I couldn't let go of. I suffered the loss of someone whose brilliance had provided a guiding light for my recovery after my shattered self returned from the War. All that was left was the tick of the clock and to watch the wild colours of the sky bleed across the moon.

There was red bleeding across the moon, and shimmers of purple lapping at the edges, as if the sky had edges, the night I decided to kill myself. A man can end his life in this city in so many ways, and I had toyed with most of them. No one but our landlady would mourn me, and I did not give myself up to considering it too melodramatically, though looking back on it I was every bit a penny drama in my own head. I decided to find a royal or a battle, and give myself up to the maw, to let my fear and my failure serve some purpose.

To even walk through the night on such a night was a risk. I knew and I did not care. There were places where Royals and Old Bloods would find sacrifices. There were places where the Portals between their place and ours stood ready. There were even tears wrought by the spilling of blood and the rended minds of sacrifices that brought forth demons of inexplicable horror. Both of us had scars from Baskerville and it had been there I had last seen the Limping Doctor.

Baskerville was a weak place in the world, rent by the blood of unwilling mortals and creatures that never should have been -- which I kept one of as a dead trophy -- and as good a place as any to go to if a man were seeking trouble. Trouble was what I wanted, and a fight. I wanted to go out with honor, so I went armed, though I knew that whatever I faced, alone, I would not be enough to surmount it.

It had been a miracle before, and loathe though I was to admit it, it had taken not only myself and the genius of James, but that of our opposites as well to prevent the previous incursion, our paths for once united in a common goal; us protecting the realm of Victoria Gloriana from incursions from a foreign power, and them stopping any more Royals from reaching their influence to corrupt this world further.

The tavern on the edge of town was as I remembered it. A warm spot of light and warmth, heavily inscribed with protective wards and sigils etched into every beam and walls, cold iron nailed into riveted doors and lintels and the comforting presence of a rust stain on the door step showing a blood sacrifice kept fresh and well tended to ensure the safety of the occupants.

It smelled, when I stepped inside, of beer and bread and meat, of food and merry making, of sick from said merry making, and of raucous nights. I was not so interested in the merry making, but the last supper of a man self condemned, a ritual that felt as right to me as the weapon I had strapped against my back. 

The meal I ordered was incidental; I did not care at the time what it consisted of and likewise the beer. It was more to dull the immediate effects of what I knew would encounter on the moors. I sat in the corner, as hollow a husk of a man as ever seen after a sacrifice, oblivious to around me. Until a figure stood next to my table and did not move.

I looked up, mostly out of irritation than of any urge to have to deal with another human being, and was surprised to see the limping Doctor standing before me like an apparition himself. I couldn't find words, and instead stared dumbly before gesturing for him to sit across from me.

"And so again we are reflections," he said to me as he sat down. "I sometimes wonder if it is some cosmic jest to draw us so clearly similar that even our choices at the very end are the same."

"I'm not inclined to laugh." I tilted my head, and wrapped my hand around the circumference of my glass. "Join me, then. Were you heading to the moors as well?"

He inclined his head. "Yes. It seemed an appropriate ending to my not so illustrious career. Without him.." He shrugged and sat down heavily. "I find little purpose for myself."

"Half breed royal." I leaned back in my chair, noting the dark circles around his previously bright eyes. "And yet. Yes. I... It's all been lacking."

"You at least are not outcast," the Limping Doctor replied, looking me directly in the eyes. He had an assessing gaze that I remembered along with an embarrassingly fresh memory that sprang forth unbidden of that stolen kiss when I had been an unwilling rescuee. "Sometimes I believe... that he is not dead. But then I wonder if the voices have begun their whispering madness once more in my mind."

"They're both dead." I had seen James's head strike rock, had seen Rache's back hit another boulder, and then the rushing rapids, the waterfall itself, the hungering gasping royals at the mouth of the falls? "You're a logical man, doctor. Even if they survived all of that…"

"I know. Logic tells me that. Logic tells me that the fall was the least danger in that cursed place," the Doctor answered me, looking grim. "And yet instinct tells me as brilliant as he was, as they were, would they go there without a plan of survival, or was it just to play their Great Game to the bitter end and leave their pawns abandoned on the battlefield." He sighed. "Truly, I do not know. All I know is that without that purpose, the horrors of my past creep inexorably over me. This was something he never understood for all his brilliance."

"I took rooms with James because there was not a veteran's hospital space that would stand me for long. His company.... eased back the immediacy of it all." And Laudanum, but I was not going to give myself to the throws of addiction as my brother had done with less cause than I.

He nodded in response and it was strange to see a mirror of understanding between us. "I have resolved to try and end my days honourably. Would you accept me as your companion tonight?"

Though he was a traitor to Queen and Country, he was and had always been an honest man to deal with, so I didn't hesitate at the idea. We were both going to die out there -- why did we have to meet our ends alone? "I would. I would be honored."

"Then let our last meal be a good one," the doctor answered me and I could not fault his reasoning.

It is a common practice for those who weary of life to make use of those final moments. Those of a passive disposition offer themselves to the Royals of those tastes that polite society does not speak of, though it is known of course. Others cast their life into the defense of their country in such places as Baskerville and I should have known that the limping doctor would be of that type as well as myself. I had never before had the luxury to study the man in depth and it was an irony that the opportunity should arise in our last meal on earth.

All of my study would amount to nothing, but still I studied. It was a habit, borne of years in the military and then years more under James' severe tutelage. I let my eyes scan for visible scars to try to place his own position in history, his own survival of an incident with a royal. I did not dare to let my mind linger long on my own memory of those times, and wondered if he was practicing the same restraint.

He had some that were more visible than others; being a traitor to Gloriana and the Empire was a dangerous undertaking and I wondered how many of the marks on his skin were caused by my own hands. It was something that made me feel a small pang of regret, without James there to remind me of the lines drawn between us.

There had been times when I had been sure that James would have embrace Rache as a kindred spirit, more than brother and I understood that even more as we ate our meal. Here was a man that under other circumstances I suspected I would have been more than honoured to call friend and companion. Fate had decreed we should stand on either sides of the line of Law, separated by the merest of  margins.

Inexorably my mind turned to the times I had encountered him before. Each time he had conspired not only to commit treason, but somehow to save lives. The notions were contradictory, but somehow appropriate. And true, I knew they were true regardless of the politics of it.  "How did you meet him?" There was no question who 'him' was.  
 "After I was... discharged from the Army, and I discovered what had happened to my sister in my absence, I made some reckless and foolish decisions." He gave me a thin smile. "I believed that making enough of a disturbance would draw attention to the problem. Unfortunately it drew only attention to myself. Sherlock, despite his own state saved me from some of the darker agents of the Crown. From that moment, I had a purpose."   
Treason. And attempting to save people from the fate of his sister, as if what had happened to her could not be undone. "And an ally. It's a shame you can't redeem yourself somehow. You're talented enough."

"I am redeeming myself," he answered. "In my eyes at least.  We are a conquered people. No, to them we are not even people, we are...livestock. I can speak the heresy without flinching now because I have seen the truth of it that they conceal many times over and with my death, I have made arrangements for evidence to find it's way to every major newspaper in the civilised world. If Rache is not dead, then perhaps I can leave him a legacy of revolution to return to."

"To what end? When a herd goes mad, a smart farmer slaughters them." Sebastian took a swig of his beer, and leaned back again. "What does one do when the very air fights you? When they walk among us?"

"To find out how to fight them, you would have to wait for that publication," he said and exhaled. "I would not create that level of risk without the possibility of success."

No, perhaps he would not and it made me intrigued somehow when I had considered myself beyond curiosity. "How will you know if anyone will act on it?" I leaned forward, elbows on the table, and tracked the motion of his eyes with my own, looking for un-surety, darting.

"I do not. Every man works to his own conscience," he answered. "Perhaps it will all be for nothing but I will have tried." His gaze was steady and honest and filled with something I could not name. Regret perhaps, or a wistfulness that this was the way things were.

"You're afraid it won't work." He wasn't, but I felt like challenging him. "You should be there to see this through, but you don't want to see the consequences if it fails."

"I'm not sure I want to see the consequences if it succeeds," he answered. "And yourself, what is your history with Moriarty?"

"Medical discharge after Afghanistan. I shouldn't have survived at all. He needed… a foil more than someone to help with the price of the flat. We were a well matched fit, and after Victoria Gloriana healed my arm, it eased many of my concerns." I had many doubts and fears and concerns, but I kept them close to my chest and had since my early days in the service.

"There are some of the Old Bloods who could do that," the doctor agreed. "I was concerned he might try something similar again as to using you for expediency."

"I suppose the opportunity never came up again." I noted it wryly. "We never spoke of it again, and he was forgiven for his failure. If I had known…" I still cannot say if I would have gone along with it, but I felt the outrage and betrayal fresh in my heart reflecting on the memory.

"You should not have been in that position. Or what happened the last time we were here. He used you then to lure the Hound."

I scoffed quietly, looking down at our empty plates, and hailed the barman for another round. "I knew what I was doing with the Hound. I'd hunted foul creatures before my discharge, and I knew what baited them best."

"It nearly had you," he reminded me. "You were lucky."  "Luck had nothing to do with it. And your Rache, I'm sure he put you at risk for the cause." It was hard to imagine that Rache had not been as obsessed as James had been in those last few weeks.

"Mmm." His non-committal utterance was as much as a confirmation as I needed. It seemed both of us had issues with our companions. It was only after the drink had been brought and the other man had doggedly drunk down half of it that he said quietly. "Did you love him?"

A more damning question had seldom been asked; still, for those who know me, and had known James, it was likely less of a struggle for you to answer than it was for me to form words in that moment. "Enough to risk madness at every turn and every case he had."

He nodded with an exhale that told me his was a similar loss.  "I understand," he answered and  for the first time I believed I had found someone who truly did.  
 I finished my own drink, and nodded to him, standing on surprisingly steady feet. Relief still carried me along. "Ready?"

He nodded and we collected our weapons, paid our tab and stepped outside into the wild night.  
Eldritch lights drifted over the surface of the moors as the moon glowed red with disturbing shadows crawling over its surface.

There was no safety out there, and I shrugged my shoulders, throwing off tenseness as I wondered how far we could get into the moors before we were overwhelmed. "Do you have a preference?"

"Not particularly," he said limping slightly. "Maybe where we defeated the Hound. That has a certain poetic symmetry."

"Good. We'll use poetry as our reasoning, then." No better nor any worse than what had led us to such unsafe grounds. We kept in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder, scanning the moors, the air, the ground beneath us. A rat, or something which had once been one, scurried over my boot.

The hollow was a damned place even among the cursed and twisted landscape of the moors. Scrubby trees reached tormented grasping limbs through the wet soil, glowing phosphorescent  fungi dripped in sickly curtains over rotting trunks even as the floating lights of fetid marsh gas drifted treacherously over dark mirror pools. 

Above us, in the sky inky black tendrils obscured the trembling stars and the air temperature drew our breath in clouds to ascend as prayers to the sky.

Strange noises, slithers, splashes and twig snaps startled us and the doctor beside me readied a large blade heavily engraved with arcane glyphs. Prepared for killing them, then, more so than I was, but I had a pistol and a rifle, and I was ready, though I carried no arcane glyphs wrought with messages from the days when the royal families had been at war. I kept my eyes on the source of the sound, and waited for something to spring itself at us.

The first came from the mud and water, something reptilian and be-tentacled that rose up streaming water from oily sides. It emanated a miasma of horror as teeth and tusks burst forward as if carved from the blackest ebony. I saw them gnash and grind, waited for the maw to open once more, and fired a shot deep into it through that mouth, and hoped it was a primary entry and not the herald of some larger portion of the creature.

It writhed with an unearthly shriek, and the doctor struck out at a flailing morass of tentacles that lashed back at my attack. It severed the stinking flesh like a hot knife through butter and his expression was one of concentration.

I did not allow myself to marvel at the beast as it fell, but knew that the ichor from its veins would cause a sympathetic response in others of its ilk and draw them in, more and more until surely we would be overwhelmed.

From out of the darkness, more beasts came, barely giving us respite between attacks. Those tawdry newspaper serials of heroic battles against the invading enemies of the Empire always neglected the cold, wet, stinking green ichor and glowing eyes and flashes of terror involved in a battle. And still, he stood beside me, stalwart and protective of my safety in a way that drew thoughts back to those fine men I had lost in the war.

And a for what? A territorial scuffle between slithering horrors, one set putting another in their place of lowered status. I had lost men like the doctor, who seemed to not be limping but whirling deft on his feet as adrenaline took him over and gave me time to reload my weapons. I took out a bayonet, and knew that it would be our last act if I had to affix it.

It was a cycle of firing, hacking stabbing and killing. The adrenaline rush carried us through the darkness, our enemies driving us into the darkest heart of this accursed place. My arms were growing heavy with fatigue, my breath panting as everything stilled around us.

The monstrosities fled into the darkness, the air becoming thick and sharp with electricity. Strange lightning glows crawled along surfaces and the scent of ozone filled the air, drowning out a tell tell metallic scent of human blood. We had stumbled into a Sacrifice and it was already complete and the Summoning in progress.

We had been lucky in many ways to have avoided the original affair, as sacrifices came with watchers and protectors, and those who wanted to keep the moors crawling as a weak place of power, a new rent in the world after the obelisk had failed them. The softness of the barrier was obvious in the air, in the way it was hard to breathe, in the way the ground rumbled beneath us and made me grab for the doctor's arm and haul him back.

This was not a spawn, a shoggoth or a Mi-go like the others we had slain; no mere slave-being or something twisted and tormented but one of the Old Ones, a full Blood Royal seeking invasion as it ruptured the breach. The air screamed and flared with twisted colours, vomited out the poisonous exhalation of another world into ours.

If we were to die, we would die in glory. There was no time for thought, as the silken folds of yellow cloth floated and waved in an unfelt breeze on the moors, clinging to the suggestions of a tumorous form as it floated up from the earth. I fired at the mask, the moonlight reflecting flatly from its surface, for all the good it would do.

"Moran!" the doctor shouted to me. "It is one of the Great Old Ones - you need one of these!" He tossed me his blade - stolen heirlooms no doubt to allow them to continue their work unless they had truly gained the knowledge to create such weapons.

"...The King in Yellow! This is an Invasion!"

The soldiering instincts are hard to eradicate. We fight for Queen and Country and this was what we fought, though rarely did a common soldier stare into the face of a Royal such as this. The crawling insanity that it wrapped around itself began to tear at my mind so viciously I could feel it, could hear myself sobbing and choking with it until I heard the doctor call out, "Do not let...think of them, think of James."

Think of James? I nearly hesitated but I managed it. I thought of him, the way his eyes became bright when his interest was engaged, his almost manic enthusiasm for a puzzle. His sheer brilliance, his quirks, his everything and the aura of madness receded enough that I could feel the haft of metal in my hand and could move again.

The figure of yellow, shifted to something ancient, loathsome and massive rising out of that rip to grip the earth.

Two humans, standing as the world shattered around them faced with a horror from beyond the world and traitor and patriot had a common cause. This wasn't about us ending our lives any more. It was about stopping this.

We did the impossible — we attacked the be-tentacled amorphous mass that loomed over us. I shot until I was out of bullets, and then used the blade in my hand to hack viciously, and the creature seemed dizzied by our immunity to his madness. And the Limping Doctor was yelling, roaring at the creature as loathsome limbs whipped at us, lethal and vicious and its grasping hunger clawing at us, body and mind. 

I lost track of time; I remember being struck many times, I remember him hauling to my feet, and me diving to save him. I remember never ending fighting as if we were two legendary heroes in a final stand against impossible odds.

And I lived to write it down. I lived to put pen to paper and enough sanity to remember the seeping, creeping crawling horror, the threat, and the fear, as well as the urge to keep alive, to keep going. When my head cleared, there was a roiling bloated corpse covered in yellow silk, or a shine like silk and we had slain Hastur, one of those named as a god.

Dawn had come, grey and sickly but enough of a dawn that the thinness of the walls between worlds vanished. I was no arcane master, just a soldier but we knew the power of the breaking dawn like a holy promise of life to a beleaguered force. 

Two men had accomplished a feat that Our Queen sent armies to accomplish.  I turned to the doctor, panting and triumphant as the fog cleared mostly from my mind and not the marsh. We were both bleeding and our clothes were soaked with sickly ichor, and our expressions wild and teetering on the insane. "What's your name?"

"John Watson," he answered miraculously, for all his eyes tracked blood tears down his face, and blood had come from his ears. His mind was intact and his grin was feral as he turned to me. "And yours?"

"Sebastian Moran. Proud to make your acquaintance." There were things to be done, people to notify of the incursion, invasion, and the corpse to be done away with through fire before it seeped into the ground and further polluted it. But in the moment, I was merely dazed and amazed to be standing there despite my injuries and the burning pain.

John reached out and grasped my hand. "The sun is coming up," he said. "And you have injuries that need treatment." As he did himself I noted. "There is much to do."

As I agreed, he said something that made me realize things had changed drastically. "I have to say, I believe that anything is possible now, don't you?"  I made a noise, at the time, possibly of agreement, but I did nod, and reach to help him move forward. "Back to the inn. And tell me about what would have been published. I am of a mind to believe you."

So it is that the two of us limped out of the dawn and I find myself no longer courting an ending. I am not sure how much of my obedience and loyalty was out of ingrained belief that there was no way to fight the Royals and Those Who Conquered without it being a suicide. Now I find myself looking at my erstwhile opposite and see a man dedicated to the saving of lives. It did not occur to me when we fought that he would not risk his own life to save me, just as I had for him. Though it pains me to admit it, that surety was somewhat lacking with James for all my devotion to him. In a world were we were two separate broken halves, somehow we made a whole greater than I expected. At the moment, what we plan does not conflict with my loyalties, residual or otherwise. John is to show me how to seal such places as this one and render it safe. That I can rationalise as helping my country in no contradiction.

Perhaps it is loneliness, perhaps indeed I need someone to follow as James used to tell me, but where we could not survive apart, we excel together.


End file.
